Hacker News Reader

Comment by earthboundkid | Hacker News Reader

CMD-F "micro" returned nothing, so here is a link to a modern nano replacement: https://micro-editor.github.io

I tried micro last time it was mentioned in a nano thread.

I really wanted to like it, and was actually excited to try it in principle, but in practice I tried hard to get into it for 3 days, and then got bored and reverted to nano.

Also, 'modern nano replacement' implies that nano is somehow antiquated. Not the case. (unless you're thinking of nano 2.9 which is what many linuxes unfortunately ship with by default instead of the latest shiny one ... no idea why).

It sounds the same to me as if you'd said that the pinephone is a modern Android replacement.

I'm curious what the intended audience for micro is? It seems like if you want extensibility you use vi or emacs. If you want a very quick and dirty program where you use the same 4 or 5 commands every time you open it, you use nano since it's already installed. I don't know a lot of people in the middle, personally, so I'm curious what people who are using micro like about it in particular.

micro has two really nice features

- mouse select

- same keyboard shortcuts as vscode

other than that it's the same as nano

I used it when my laptop died and I decided to do continue working on my project using termux on my (low end) smartphone. It played well with the touchscreen and made a nice temporary environment. Basic and almost zero learning curve, but extensible and customizable when I wanted it.

Windows sys admin here. Micro is nice because it is a single-file, stand-alone executable that has mouse support, macro record/playback and syntax highlighting. (I haven't checked Nano recently).

Because of this, I don't mind installing it on servers. It is great for making quick edits to json configs, batch files, powershell, python scripts, etc. Syntax highlighting and line numbering are key. The alternative is editing the file locally and then getting it onto the server which can be challenging for locked down systems, especially Windows Server Core which does not have a GUI environment.

Even on my local machine, if I need to make a really quick edit, it is much faster to use this than waiting for VS Code or PyCharm to load. You also stay focused. By this I mean, your eyes don't leave the powershell window that you are currently working in. This allows me to more quickly complete the task at hand.

The key bindings for traditional text editors are awful. Micro uses the same normal key bindings that every GUI has used since 1984. A Unix should ship with an editor that has default key bindings that a normal user can guess how to use. Vi is an inexcusable choice for the default text editor although I understand why it’s popular for aficionados. It should be an advanced user choice, not a hazing rite of passage for newbs. Nano is close but still has the wrong bindings. Micro is actually correct. It’s not my actual daily text editor, but I use it when I just need a simple TUI editor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com